it. To Luke, it seemed, complimenting Grace would mean a huge compromise of his principles. If she drove the bus through a flood and around a tornado, saving scores of children in her charge, he’d probably only comment on whether or not she fully depressed the parking brake afterward.
She leaned back against the steering wheel and crossed her arms in front of her. “So why do you know all this, Luke? Is it a prerequisite for becoming the headmaster?”
“I was the driver here for five years.”
“Right,” she scoffed, picking idly at some duct tape that was covering a hole on the back of the seat. “After that football scholarship to Stanford, you decided to come back home and drive a bus.”
“I didn’t go to Stanford,” he said quietly.
Grace was about to toss off a joke when she noticed how still his expression was and realized he wasn’t kidding. “You’re serious! You didn’t go at all?”
“Nope.”
Suddenly the buzz of the locusts outside seemed very loud.
“Why not?” she asked. “I thought it was a done deal.”
He shrugged. “Nothing’s ever really a done deal, I guess. Good lesson to learn early.”
The scholarship, she remembered well, had been very important to Luke. It was an incredible accomplishment. His parents hadn’t had much money to begin with, but when his mother had died—when he was, what, in ninth grade? Grace wasn’t sure—they’d lost half their income. Luke had taken a part-time job at the Texaco station, but his college prospects looked bleak until his spectacular senior year, when the scouts had come to check him out. His scholarship had been a huge deal in Blue Moon Bay. Even the newspaper covered it.
“Why on earth didn’t you go, Luke?” Grace asked, increasingly curious. Had he just blown it off? Too cool for school? “It was such a great opportunity.”
“It just didn’t work out,” he said shortly. “Bad timing. Forget it, it doesn’t matter now.”
“Well, sure it matters—”
“No.” His tone was hard, and left no room for argument. “It doesn’t.”
Grace looked at him wordlessly for a moment. What had happened to him? How had she never heard anything about it? Maybe she’d just been gone for too long. She was out of the Blue Moon Bay loop.
“What time are you scheduled to take the driving test on Friday?” Luke asked, taking a folded paper out of his back pocket.
It was clear he wasn’t going to talk about it anymore. She’d have to get the scoop from someone else. “Three,” she answered, trying to sound as if she wasn’t still stuck on the scholarship thing.
“All right. Chuck Borden’s going to drive up with you, since you’re not allowed to drive the bus without a commercially licensed driver until you have a CDL yourself.”
“Is Chuck the Spanish teacher?”
“He is. But he’s also the other bus driver. He took the run in order to earn a little extra. It works well for him, but it also means that he’s on a tight schedule. He does his run, then starts his classes. He won’t be available as back-up for you.”
“Who says I’m going to need back-up?”
“No one. I hope.”
“Well, I won’t,” she said with determination. “I’ll be here every day.”
“Assuming you pass the test. Don’t get ahead of yourself, or you’ll lose sight of that goal.”
“I don’t think so. I’m very well aware that the test is coming up.”
“You worried?”
“No,” she lied. “Not a bit.”
His mouth quirked into a half-smile as he leaned forward and handed her the piece of paper he’d taken out of his pocket. “This is the route you’re going to be taking Monday morning. Assuming you pass the test.”
“I’ll pass,” she said, studying the list. Some of the students were quite far-flung. “This is going to take forever.”
“It’s about an hour.”
“You really do need transportation,” she mused. “This one here on Saltside Lane would take half an hour to get to if you took a direct route. It would be hard for nine-to-fivers to get a kid here and still get to work on time unless one of the parents were working in town. And, God knows, there aren’t any jobs here.”
Luke gave a half smile, then said, “That’s Donald Henderson. He’s one of our scholarship kids. There’s no way in the world his parents could get him here themselves.”
She looked at the remaining addresses, and the geography of Blue Moon Bay and the surrounding area came back to her with complete clarity. Some of the students lived in multimillion-dollar homes in Cape Trayhorn Estates, and some lived in rowhouses along the main streets of town.
“You know, I never thought I’d be driving my own kid around Blue Moon Bay to school, much less anyone else’s.” She sighed. “So much for moving up in life.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you, Grace?” Luke asked in a sharp voice.
She was startled by his question and his tone. “What do you mean?”
“Why have you always been so down on Blue Moon Bay? Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve talked about getting out of here, like it’s some kind of hellhole. It’s a nice town, Grace, and it’s home to a lot of nice people.”
Humiliation filled her. “I didn’t mean to insult anyone, Luke, it’s just not the place I want to be.”
“You say that like anyone who does want to be here is some stupid peasant who doesn’t know any better.” He stood up and started for the door, then stopped and looked her dead in the eye. “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve wanted things bigger, better.” He hesitated, then added, “Richer. How’s it working out for you?”
She gaped at him in silence, completely unable to formulate a response.
“Good luck on the test,” he said abruptly, then left, shaking his head.
She watched him for a moment, then sprang from the seat and out into the thick evening air behind him. “Wait a minute, Luke!”
He stopped, and she could see him take a long breath before turning to face her. As though he was mustering patience.
That galled her.
“What?” he asked wearily.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She wished she had a better argument, but the words had been stunned right out of her. They’d come back tonight, probably, around midnight. “You don’t know me at all,” she said lamely.
“You’re right—I don’t. I only know what I see.”
She went to him boldly and stood before him. “What do you see, Luke? Huh? What do you see?”
He looked down at her, and for a moment she saw tenderness cross his expression. But it was only for a moment, and it was gone quickly. “It doesn’t matter what I see.”
“No,” she said, wishing she really felt that way. “That’s right, it doesn’t matter. So keep it to yourself, okay?”
“You’re absolutely right, that’s what I should have done in the first place.”
“You bet it is. You know, you don’t have a clue what I’ve been through.” Self-pity rose in her breast, but she pushed it back down. It was enough that she knew she was a good person and, more than that, a good mother. She was proud of the way she’d held it together when Michael left, proud that Jimmy thought